


A Chance to Breathe

by tatooinesun



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: All aboard the Feels train, Angst, Drabbles, M/M, Post DA2, Post Game, from the time anders and hawke leave kirkwall to inquisition, mages on the run
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4308003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooinesun/pseuds/tatooinesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd rather be on the run with you than safe with anyone else." Hunted after the fated explosion of the chantry, Hawke and Anders pursue a life on the run. Together they pick up the pieces in a desperate attempt to heal and start anew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Silence

Hawke is trying desperately to put him back together but how do you fix someone who’s so intent on tearing at the seams? He spends long draining days coaxing Anders to eat, to sleep, to do anything but disappear back into himself as he knows from experience he will do without his influence. He’s used to his lover’s blind rage, his trembling passion. But this is different. The brooding anger he can deal with, the anger he can handle. It’s the silence that hurts him the most.

It’s not as if this attitude is spontaneous – Hawke had been experiencing bouts of Anders’ surly moods in the months leading up to the cataclymisic destruction of the chantry. However back then he had dismissed the downturned mouth and scowling brows as a direct result of Meredith’s ever tightening fist – and had in fact reflected a similar demeanor in the weeks leading up to Kirkwall’s climax.

“Maker, look at us,” Hawke would say when they’d spend their Hightown nights in sulking quiet. “Couple of old geezers locked up in a mansion brooding in front of a fire.”

Anders would pass him a tired smile.

“Templars beware.”

Those simple times seem centuries ago, a period in his life Hawke never had thought he would mourn. In the aftermath of Anders’ insurrection, the apostate has become all but engulfed in a blank silence. Hawke doesn’t know what to do with silence.

For weeks Hawke speaks only words of necessity to him. I’ll hunt for food. We should avoid the roads. It’s going to rain.  
Anders acknowledges him with a tilt of his head and then disappears back into the empty chasm of his mind. And yet despite his reclusiveness, or rather in spite of it, Hawke still makes the effort to keep him safe, to guard him, to spare him passing glances of desperation every few miles.

On the cold nights when they sleep on opposite sides of the still smoldering ashes of a fire, he struggles with his forgiveness. How could he, a part of him snarls. How could he not tell him? And yet another part whispers that maybe it’s far better he didn’t know. He might not have stopped him. For the rest of the night he is haunted by what ifs and could have beens, a fading vision of his own somber and twisted face looking out over the destruction he might have wrought.

“Look at me,” Hawke whispers one still dark morning by the fire and despite Anders’ gaze having trailed across him numerous times through their travels he knows he hasn’t truly seen him in years. His jaw clenches and a muscle jumps in his neck. Hawke reaches forward and places a hand under his chin, shifting his face slightly until he has no choice but to stare up at him.

Hawke doesn’t recognize this stranger looking back. Dead eyes match his own, cold and empty and not really seeing anything at all. While Anders has always towered over him, beneath his touch he feels fragile, unbearably thin and bony. Ready to be swept away by the faintest of breezes at any second. His hair is free from its tie, longer and wild from months on the run, a patchy beard obscuring most of his jaw.

He looks so tired, so worn.

And all Hawke wants to do is protect him.

“Come here,” he murmurs, crouching to his knees and drawing Anders up against his chest. It’s the first time they’ve touched in months and Hawke doesn’t fail to hear the shuttering breath from Anders’ lips as he seizes the front of Hawke’s robes, burying his greasy tangled hair beneath Hawke’s even more tangled chin.

Anders begins to chant a phrase and his voice sounds hoarse and foreign from underuse. He bends his ear and catches two words. Thank you, thank you, repeated over and over like a repentant chantry brother.

Hawke blinks stupidly down at the mage, confused by the unfounded gratitude but thankful to coax something out of his lover nonetheless. He strokes his head and responds to his platitudes with the name Anders shared with him all those years ago in the candlelit darkness of his clinic. Not the name that was bestowed upon him in the circle or the name his faraway friends throw around a Wicked Grace game or a heated battlefield so carelessly, but his real name.

He feels the apostate's muscles relax beneath him and he sighs in relief when a silence falls between him and Anders doesn't pull away, like he used to.

It is in the silence that Hawke has come to the realization that he will do anything for this man. And it terrifies him.


	2. Apathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve seen lots of fics that portray Justice and Hawke in a positive light however I wanted to explore the relationship as if they perhaps don’t exactly see eye to eye. This chapter contains suicidal thoughts, so fair warning.

“You should have just killed me,” Anders says early one morning as they lie on separate bedrolls. Hawke doesn’t reply, his mouth a thin line as he continues to stare up at the fading stars in the skies, trying to focus on anything but the possessed mage across the fire. “Things would have been so much simpler if you’d just killed me.” 

His voice is monotone and Hawke wants nothing more than for Anders to shout at him, to scream and yell in retaliation until his voice is hoarse and there is at least some amount of inflection in it, as proof he’s not just a walking spirit filled corpse.  


“Well I didn’t,” is his simple reply. Using the ground for leverage, Hawke hoists himself from the dirt covered bedroll with a grunt and wipes his hands on his robes. “Let’s get a move on,” he says distractedly in a meager attempt to redirect the conversation. “I don’t like being out in the open when it’s this light.” 

Anders makes no sign of hearing him.

“C’mon Anders, rise and shine.” Hawke crosses the camp and nudges the apostate with his foot. Anders rolls over with his back to him, pulling damaged and patch ridden robes tighter around his shoulders. A lump rises in Hawke’s throat and in that moment he wants nothing more than to fall to his knees and weep. 

He thinks back to the time an eight year old Bethany had rescued an injured baby bird, fallen from a nest that had been perched atop a tree outside her window. In tears she had brought it to her older brother with a desperate plea to mend its broken wing. Never particularly accomplished at healing but wanting to show off for his little sister nonetheless, he had cast a sloppy novice healing spell and not only failed to fix the creature’s wing but snap it’s neck in the process. 

Carver had scowled at him while Bethany sobbed into his shoulder. 

As he gazes down at his motionless lover, he is reminded of that same desperate and hopeless feeling from all those years ago. 

 

At dusk he finds him prowling the edge of their makeshift camp, muttering hastily under his breath, eyes darting, fists clenching and unclenching. A luminous blue has replaced the whites of his eyes, and the soft light creeps out from every crevice of his skin. Hawke knows what’s coming next. 

“How can you sit idle mortal, while the plight of mages is still at hand,” Justice’s trembling baritone snarls from Anders’ lips and yet Hawke barely so much as blinks. He’s been waiting for this, ever since he and Anders had made their desperate escape. 

When Hawke remains silent, Justice presses. “You are a mage yourself and yet you choose to remain complacent while thousands of your brethren are being put to the sword. It is not righteous.” 

“I’m keeping Anders safe,” he replies angrily with a tone more akin to convincing himself than the enraged spirit before him. 

“I am Anders,” the spirit growls. “Your apathy is of no use to us, I have known for years that you would merely be an obstacle to our cause.”

Though Hawke knows that this is the spirit giving voice to these cold words, he can’t help but flinch at how callously they are used against him. Not for the first time he begins to wonder how much of this is Justice and how much is the man he loves. 

“Then leave.” He regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth but he always did speak before thinking. The spirit’s expression is blank, blue orbs staring at him not in rage but a twisted sort of epiphany as though he had never considered departing a valid option. 

Without giving Hawke a chance to rebuke himself, he twists on his heel, frayed robes snapping sharply behind him, and disappears into the thick trees that encircle the clearing in which they’ve made camp. A heavy silence clings to the air, only broken by the crackling of the fire and a soft breeze that stirs the branches of the foliage Anders has receded into.  
Finally Hawke gasps for air. He hadn’t realized he has been holding his breath. 

“I’m sorry,” he says into the darkness. 

He’s gone for the entirety of a night and a day before he resurfaces from a grove of trees opposite from the overgrowth he had disappeared into. Hawke chokes back a sigh of relief when he sees him emerge from the brambles, fighting the urge to sprint across the clearing and engulf him in his arms. He’s not certain what kind of state he’s in. Anders says nothing as he stumbles towards the makeshift fire, copper coloured eyes on the embers before finally trailing his gaze to look at Hawke. Silently, Anders takes a seat beside him, propping his head upon Hawke’s shoulder with a gentle sigh. Hawke sits motionless before finally wrapping an arm around his waist. 

He holds him until dawn.


	3. Forgiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something a little happier to alleviate all the angst

They have good days and bad days. Today is a good day. Hawke can tell from Anders’ quickened step and the easy hum of an off tune but familiar Chasind song between his lips. Soothed into complacency, Hawke is content that he will have to do no gentle prodding or coaxing to convince Anders to walk a few more steps or take a nibble of his meager dinner. Not today at least.  
And so he’s rather taken aback when his cheerful mood takes a turn for the worse and his lover queries the very few words Hawke had been hoping to avoid since their hasty departure from Kirkwall. 

“Why did you spare me?” The wounded question fall out of Anders’ mouth as they trek through a forgotten glen somewhere south of Ansburg. He’s taken the lead for the first time and Hawke wants to pretend he doesn’t hear him because his back is turned and his voice is hoarse and carried away by the winds. But Anders proceeds to repeat himself, this time with more force.   
“Why did you spare me Desmond?” 

His spoken name catches him off guard and he’s momentarily stunned at the realization of how long it’s been since he’s heard it. Hawke, Champion, good-for-nothing doglord, all of those titles in abundance yes but never the name he’d responded to for a good part of his life before the blight had torn his family from Lothering. His father had always been Hawke and so when he had heard his surname directed as his new label upon his arrival in Kirkwall, it had been a punch in the gut to say the least.

He opens his mouth to respond, closes it, and then opens it again.

Anders does not turn to face him and Hawke stares into the back of his head as the apostate leans against his staff which he has begun to utilize more as a cane than a weapon with every passing day. Hawke has had to reach out and steady him on more than one occasion but Anders continues to shrug him off with little more than a grunt of thanks before marching ever onward, Hawke looking on with pursed lips. 

A three word explanation rises to his mouth but he swallows it quickly and settles for a tongue in cheek answer. A characteristic feat to be sure, he thinks bitterly. 

“Well for starters you’re a bloody talented healer.” 

Anders smiles for the first time in weeks, a real smile that bares no trace of remorse or regret, and Hawke feels a flicker of something like hope inside him. 

“Do continue. I think I like where this is headed.”

Hawke pauses, a smirk lightening his features. “You’re incredibly awful at Wicked Grace so I’m guaranteed an automatic win whenever we play.” 

Anders hums his acknowledgement.

“And the fact that you’re hopelessly dashing doesn’t hurt either. Keeping you within eyesight is good for my morale.”

“Flatterer.” 

“What can I say. I’m a simple man with simple needs.” 

When Anders turns away with a chuckle and resumes his hike along the makeshift path they’d been blazing, Hawke allows the grave frown that has been pulling at the seams of his face to suddenly take surface, ignoring the blind heat behind his eyes. He had to be strong for him; otherwise they’d both fall apart. 

Anders’ question rings in Hawke’s ears. Why did you spare me?

Why he could stand up to the very tyranny of the templars without batting an eyelash and yet fail to answer a simple straightforward question from his lover was, as Varric would say, one of life’s greatest mysteries. 

Because I love you. Because I need you. Because every blighted templar in all of the Maker damned world couldn’t keep me away from you. 

Because I want to force myself to accept that what you did was worth it. 

“Don’t fall too far behind love,” Anders’ uncharacteristically contented voice snaps him from his reverie. “Wouldn’t want your morale dropping too low.”

He raises his head and flashes a wry smile before dolefully trailing after the apostate, suddenly realizing he forgave him a long time ago, perhaps even before his act against the Chantry.


End file.
